Not under law: Not under its condemnation or its commands?

Kilk1 said:

It's interesting that when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, His answer wasn't one of the Ten Commandments but rather, the commandments from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, commandments to love God and others (Matthew 22:35-40). Keeping these two commandments leads to keeping whatever other commandments God would expect of His people, thus elevating it above all other commandments.

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And the reason being that any request of human behavior or change must have the foundation of "Why".
The First commandant is the "Why" and the second is like it....the action.



29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

SkyWriting said:

So lets say you back up your car out the driveway after a night of drinking, and you run over your sister. People ask what happened and you lie about being drunk.

Let's say you die in your sleep that night.
What would be the worst form of hell you can imagine?
- Being scolded for your behavior.
- Being beaten up for your behavior.
- or being in a bare room with no light or windows and the memory never fades.

Hell is like the last one. You are tormented by what you have done and the torment never fades. But mostly about how you lied to cover the act.

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And you know that this is the truth about what Hell is like because...................?

SkyWriting said:

Sinners don't have fun. Sinners work hard to cover the pain with distractions. Drugs, drink, sex, violence, all methods to cover the pain of refusing forgiveness.

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Sorry, while I don't disagree that such a scenario is possible, I do disagree that it is the norm. Before I became a Christian, I was a sinner who had a GREAT life and LOTS of fun, as did most of my friends back then (none of whom were Christians at that point either). If you don't know God, and you don't think that premarital sex, for instance, is a sin, then why would you seek to be forgiven for engaging in it? And who would you seek forgiveness from?

SkyWriting said:

Forgiveness means you have to admit you did wrong.

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Finally, something in your post that I can agree with

God bless you!

--David

SkyWriting said:

...unbelievers don't sin. Scripture covers all of this.

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Where, exactly, does Scripture cover this

Thanks!

--David

St_Worm2 said:

Where, exactly, does Scripture cover this

Thanks!

--David

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Thanks for wondering.

John 15:22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

James 4:17
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Luke 12:47
And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating.

John 9:41
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

2 Peter 2:21
For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

Kilk1 said:

It's interesting that when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, His answer wasn't one of the Ten Commandments but rather, the commandments from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, commandments to love God and others (Matthew 22:35-40). Keeping these two commandments leads to keeping whatever other commandments God would expect of His people, thus elevating it above all other commandments.

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Luke 24:44
Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all the things that are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

John 19:28
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture would be fulfilled, said, “I am thirsty."

Obviously, the law and the prophets were fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

Thus, the law has become obsolete as was the old covenant.

Many church organizations will throw 600 of those laws in the bin.

Those two greatest commandments were in the law and the book of the law is no longer valid.

So what happens to those two greatest commandments in the law after Christ fulfilled them?

St_Worm2 said:

Where, exactly, does Scripture cover this

Thanks!

--David

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Sin is dramatically reduced within the Christian life but no one is perfect.

Proverbs 10:12
Hatred stirs up strife, But love covers all offenses.

1 John 3:9
No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin continually, because he has been born of God.

Since we are in effect discussing righteousness.

Philippians 3:9
And may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

Since I have the righteousness of Christ, my righteousness is perfect.

This translates into a life without sin or even judgement for sin.

Hello @klutedavid, the question of mine that you quoted was made in reply to @SkyWriting's claim that "unbelievers do not sin", and that the Bible tells us that this is true, but your post seems to be all about believers who live w/o sin in their lives.

You know, between the two of you, you have managed to eliminate sin altogether

Kidding aside, while I agree with most of what you just said, I do have a question for you.

klutedavid said:

Since I have the righteousness of Christ, my righteousness is perfect. This translates into a life without sin or even judgement for sin.

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While I agree with you that, as believers, we are given the righteousness of Christ, and also, that we will not be judged for the sins that we commit, how does either one of those facts translate into our having "a life without sin"?

When we, as believers, do what God told us not to do (lie, lose our temper, become impatient or unkind, etc., etc.), or whenever we fail to do what He commanded us to do (e.g. Matthew 7:12, Luke 10:27) we sin, and we are told to confess that fact to God to be forgiven and cleansed .. e.g. 1 John 1:9.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding the point you are trying to make however (when you said that, as Christians, we live lives w/o sin)? If I am, please let me know how.

Thanks

God bless you!

--David

SkyWriting said:

Thanks for wondering.

John 15:22
If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.

James 4:17
So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Luke 12:47
And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating.

John 9:41
Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

2 Peter 2:21
For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

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You're welcome

Your use of Bible verses reminds me of someone else, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who used them in much the same way. She once said that one of the biggest reasons that she decided to become an atheist was because "even the Bible says, 'there is no God'". She was right, the Bible does say that, a number of times, in fact .. e.g. Psalms 14:1, but does anyone, even Madalyn herself, truly believe that that is the meaning that the Bible intends to convey in such verses

So it is with the verses that you posited for us above, and I'm sure that you know it There's no point in explaining each verse (since the Bible contradicts the general claim that you've made about all of them), but I will do so with one or two of them anyway.

Starting at the top, with John 15:22, the idea is not that if Jesus had not come, the people would have continued on in some kind of sinless perfection—as if the coming of Jesus introduced the Jews to sin for the very first time, Jews who had been making animal sacrifices to cover the sins they committed since the Law was given to them by Moses Granted, the Jews would have had an excuse for the specific sin of 'rejecting God as He really is' if the Lord Jesus had not told them, but a sin that the Lord does not impute (due to lack of knowledge) is still a sin nevertheless .. and, as I said earlier, no Jew believed him/herself guiltless before God (as they were all aware of the many other transgressions that they were guilty of committing/knew were sinful, thanks to the Law of Moses, as well the law that was written on their hearts by God from birth, of course .. e.g. Romans 2:12-16).

You know, this is a waste of my time, and yours, so I'll stop with that verse.

Here is but a small portion of what the Bible has to say about unbelievers and their sin (and the fact that all of us "believers" used to be just like them, dead in our trespasses and sins, until God finally saved us, that is).

EVERYONE is guilty of sinning, Sky, believers AND unbelievers, because as the Bible tells us plainly,

--David

Soyeong said:

In Romans 6:14, Paul described the law that we are not under as being a law where sin had dominion over us, which does not describe the Law of Moses,

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Contrare. . .

Sin had dominion over all those under the law of Moses, which Paul, the Hebrew of Hebrews (Philippians 3:5) vividly describes in Romans 7:15-23.

No one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law (Romans 3:20), for
the law was not given to make righteous.

The Decalogue and Levitical laws were the condition of the Mosaic Covenant, which had been temporarily added (Galatians 3:19; Romans 5:20) to the Abrahamic Covenant of grace (Genesis 15:6, Genesis 15:18).
Those laws were given for the purpose of revealing sin (Romans 3:20, Romans 7:7) and of leading to Christ (Galatians 3:24), they were not given to make righteous, because from the beginning with Abraham, righteousness had always been by faith (Genesis 5:6; Romans 4:3), never by law-keeping, for "all who rely on observing the law are under a curse." (Galatians 3:10).

Now that faith in Christ has come (the Mosaic law fulfilling its purpose and now being fulfilled in the NT law of Christ, Matthew 22:37-40), we are no longer under the Mosaic Covenant (Hebrews 8:13) nor under the supervision of the Mosaic law (Galatians 3:25).

The law has done what it was intended to do. . .the old covenant is now obsolete. . .and we are back to a covenant of grace alone, (Ephesians 2:8-9) just as it was with Abraham.

It is for freedom (from the yoke of slavery to the law, Galatians 2:4, Galatians 5:1b) that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1a) and taken us back to a covenant of grace alone.

Keeping in mind that loving your neighbor as yourself is not new to the NT, but it was not part of the Mosaic law on which the temporary Mosaic Covenant was conditioned and, therefore, it remains in the New Covenant--as the law of Jesus Christ (Matthew 22:37-40), and which now fulfills that temporary Mosaic law "and any other commandment there may be." (Romans 13:8-10).

Kilk1 said:

I started typing a response, but it got deleted, so this reply will be shorter. Regarding Romans 7:4-13, I believe the meaning of "the law" is the same all around in this section. It's something that's good and is "not" sin. However, sin takes advantage of the law (such as the command not to covet) to produce covetousness, that it might become exceedingly sinful. I don't see "the law" in Romans 7:7 as meaning something different than it meant in Romans 7:6 or Romans 7:8. Even in Romans 7:5, sin is said to work "through" the law rather than it "being" the law. So in Romans 6, we're dead to "sin" itself, and in Romans 7:4-13, we're dead to "the law" (which isn't sin, Romans 7:7), which sin hijacked.

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In Romans 7:22, Paul said that he delighted in obeying the Law of God and in Romans 7:7, Paul said that the Law of God is not sinful. If Romans 7:5 were referring to the law of God, then please explain how it makes sense to you to think that Paul delighted a law that stirred up sinful passions in order to bear fruit unto death and that such a law is not sinful. When Romans 7:7-8 speaks about sin acting upon the Law of God, it is my interpretation that it is referring to the law of sin acting on the law of God because Paul described the law of sin as hindering him from doing the good of obeying the Law of God that he wanted to do, so the law of sin works through the Law of God rather than being the Law of God. In Romans 7:21-25, Paul was making concluding statements about the law of God and the law of sin, which implies that the previous verses that he was concluding from also discussed the Law of God and the law of sin, so perhaps it would help if you were to explain which are verses that you interpret as referring to the law of sin.

As for Acts of the Apostles 15, do you believe the apostles would command physical circumcision for both Jews and for Gentiles; they just wouldn't command it for salvation but, rather, for the purpose of being a sign of the Abrahamic covenant?

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The first thing that Paul did after the Jerusalem Council was to have Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3), so I don't think that it is correct to interpret Acts 15 as being a ruling against circumcision. The Apostles did not have any authority to tell Gentiles not to obey any of God's commands, so yes, I think that they would command physical circumcision for both Jews and Gentiles. For example, a Gentile needed to become circumcised in order to eat of the Passover Lamb (Exodus 12:48), and in Paul encouraged Gentiles to continue to observe Passover (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). In Acts 15:19-22, the expectation was that Gentiles would continue to learn about how to obey Moses by hearing Him taught every Sabbath in the synagogues.

As for Galatians 3:24-25, I understand you to be saying that the law of Moses and the law of faith are one and the same. However, isn't "the law" of Galatians 3:23 contrasted with the faith, and isn't "the law" in this passage shown to be the law of Moses just a few verses earlier? A few verses before, in Galatians 3:17, "the law" is shown to be that which came 430 years after the promise to Abraham.

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In Matthew 7:23, Jesus said that he would tell those who are workers of lawlessness to depart from him because he never knew them, so knowing Christ is the goal of the law for righteousness for everyone who has faith (Romans 10:4). In Galatians 3:26, it says that for in Christ we are all sons of God through faith, and this needs to be balanced with 1 John 3:4-6, where sin is the transgression of God's law, those who continue to practice seen have neither seen nor known him, and those who do nor practice righteousness in obedience to God's law are not sons of God. Again, Jesus being the living embodiment of God's law is what it means for him to be the Son of God, so he is the object of the faith that is expresses through obeying God's law, so Galatians 3:24-25 is speaking about before he came. If you agree that Christ is the only way to the Father and that what is listed in Hebrews 11 is example of people in the OT who had saving faith, then it follows that they therefore had faith in Christ, and they expressed that faith by obeying God, but the object of their faith had not yet come.

St_Worm2 said:

You're welcome

Your use of Bible verses reminds me of someone else, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who used them in much the same way. She once said that one of the biggest reasons that she decided to become an atheist was because "even the Bible says, 'there is no God'". She was right, the Bible does say that, a number of times, in fact .. e.g. Psalms 14:1, but does anyone, even Madalyn herself, truly believe that that is the meaning that the Bible intends to convey in such verses

So it is with the verses that you posited for us above, and I'm sure that you know it There's no point in explaining each verse (since the Bible contradicts the general claim that you've made about all of them), but I will do so with one or two of them anyway.

Starting at the top, with John 15:22, the idea is not that if Jesus had not come, the people would have continued on in some kind of sinless perfection—as if the coming of Jesus introduced the Jews to sin for the very first time, Jews who had been making animal sacrifices to cover the sins they committed since the Law was given to them by Moses Granted, the Jews would have had an excuse for the specific sin of 'rejecting God as He really is' if the Lord Jesus had not told them, but a sin that the Lord does not impute (due to lack of knowledge) is still a sin nevertheless .. and, as I said earlier, no Jew believed him/herself guiltless before God (as they were all aware of the many other transgressions that they were guilty of committing/knew were sinful, thanks to the Law of Moses, as well the law that was written on their hearts by God from birth, of course .. e.g. Romans 2:12-16).

You know, this is a waste of my time, and yours, so I'll stop with that verse.

Here is but a small portion of what the Bible has to say about unbelievers and their sin (and the fact that all of us "believers" used to be just like them, dead in our trespasses and sins, until God finally saved us, that is).

Ephesians 2
1 You were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).
​

EVERYONE is guilty of sinning, Sky, believers AND unbelievers, because as the Bible tells us plainly,

Romans 3
9 Both Jews and Greeks are all under sin;
10 as it is written,
“THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;
11 THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
12 ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”

23 ALL HAVE SINNED, and fall short of the glory of God.
​

--David

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I didn't say or intend to imply that people without faith in Jesus would go to Heaven because they are perfect. Or that people who have no knowledge of Jesus are going to Hell.
But punishment for sin is reserved for believers. Those not in-the-know cannot be punished.

Romans 5:13
13 For sin was in the world before the law was given;
but sin is not taken into account when there is no law.

Romans 4:15
For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.

1 Corinthians 15:56
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

St_Worm2 said:

You know, this is a waste of my time, and yours,

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Indeed.

St_Worm2 said:

So it is with the verses that you posited for us above, and I'm sure that you know it

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My intent was to inform readers that there is no sin outside of the law.
The passages listed are even better in their context.

SkyWriting said:

My intent was to inform readers that there is no sin outside of the law.
The passages listed are even better in their context.

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The law exist before it was given in Sinai..."Sin was in the world before the law was given" Romans 5,

And Sin is transgression of the law..1John 3

SkyWriting said:

My intent was to inform readers that there is no sin outside of the law. The passages listed are even better in their context.

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Hi Sky, I think you may have succeeded in doing so, but the question is, are there any who are truly outside of the law (yes, there are some .. see below*)?

I agree that the Lord will not impute guilt and judge someone according to what they do not know and/or do not understand, but everyone (*save the unborn, the infant, and some of those among the mentally infirmed*) knows something of right and wrong, a lot actually (because of what God does for all of us), but if that is all that they know (the basic law that God wrote on their heart, that is), then it seems to me that that will be the basis for their judgment and condemnation at the Great White Throne.

Here, for instance, at the center of the Apostle Paul's great treatise on the life and fate of those who remain outside of Christ (Romans 1:18 to Romans 3:23), we learn that,

No unrepentant/unforgiven sinner will escape the Judgment of God simply because they are ignorant of the Law of Moses, because none are ignorant of the law that is written upon the hearts of all by God, save those whose minds are incapable of understanding it.

--David

SkyWriting said:

... punishment for sin is reserved for believers. Those not in-the-know cannot be punished.

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I believe that the Scriptures say differently.

Unbelievers will be judged and condemned on the Day of Judgment at the Great White Throne.

Believers, on the other hand (those who are "in Christ" when they die), will go to the Bema Seat Judgment of Christ instead of to the Great White Throne, where we will receive rewards (or the lack thereof) for our good works in this life (or the lack thereof), but NO ONE at the Bema Seat of Christ will be judged and condemned like those who will stand in the Judgment at the Great White Throne.

Punishment is reserved for unbelievers, for those whose sins are not covered (atoned for and forgiven) in this life by the blood of Christ.

Believers, on the other hand, have nothing left to be punished for, since the shed blood of Christ atoned for our sins, reconciled us with the Father, and satisfied His wrath against us.

God bless you!

--David

St_Worm2 said:

Unbelievers will be judged and condemned on the Day of Judgment at the Great White Throne.

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I didn't say they will not be judged. I said that they will not be judged for their sins.
Because they have no sin. But they are judged according to their works.

You can't but judged by law you are not aware of. But you can be judged on your works as an unbeliever.

SkyWriting said:

I didn't say they will not be judged. I said that they will not be judged for their sins.
Because they have no sin. But they are judged according to their works.

You can't but judged by law you are not aware of. But you can be judged on your works as an unbeliever.

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You will be judged by your conscience (Romans 2:14-15) at the judgment (Romans 2:16).

SkyWriting said:

I didn't say they will not be judged. I said that they will not be judged for their sins. Because they have no sin. But they are judged according to their works. You can't but judged by law you are not aware of. But you can be judged on your works as an unbeliever.

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OK, let's say that you are correct. So, what then is the ~basis~ for God judging an ignorant unbeliever's "works" (as being either good or bad, instead of good or sinful) apart from some sort of law that defines what a "good" work and what a "bad" work actually is?

Also, if some of an ignorant unbeliever's works are judged to be "bad" works by God, what action, if any, will God take as the result of such a judgment of their works?

Finally, would the result/punishment be different for them, as an ~ignorant~ unbeliever, than it would be for a ~knowledgeable~ unbeliever (which is an unbeliever who knows and understands the Law .. see Romans 2:12)?

Thanks!

--David